Equal Footing
by thesecondshelf
Summary: Ron and Ginny bond over a shared past experience, discussing horcruxes, common insecurities, and the definition of "obnoxious and couple-y". Rated because neither of them could keep from swearing. As usual, I'm not sure if this is more sad or funny. R/Hr, hints at H/G. Complete.


**Equal Footing**

* * *

Harry had just started telling the story of his life since she had last seen him, and Ginny was already furious.

"You're aresholes. All three of you. Self-centered, self-serving arseholes-"

"Ginny-" Harry interrupted.

"Don't "Ginny" me. You knew. All three of you knew that that diary was a horcrux and nobody thought to include me on any of this."

"Dumbledore-" Hermione started, but Ginny was having none of it.

"Dumbledore was an arsehole too," she spat. "Didn't any of you think that maybe you should talk to the person who had experience with these things before you went off looking for them? Didn't it occur to you that maybe I could have warned you about what you were after, and what it was capable of, and maybe how to survive being possessed by the Dark Lord?"

Her friends sat silent on the bed opposite hers, looking everywhere but in her eyes.

 _Unbelievable_ , she thought.

"I'll take that as a 'no'," she said finally, shaking her head.

She kicked the still stunned trio out of her room and slammed the door behind them.

* * *

It was Ron who found Ginny in the back garden that evening, eager to make things right. Ginny might have been shocked, a year ago, but she had seen the look in Ron's eyes up in her bedroom when Harry explained the evil the three of them had been chasing for the past year.

"Did the Carrows ever use Veritaserum on you?" he asked quietly, settling beside her on the grass.

"They used worse than that," she muttered, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them.

"I know. But did they question you with truth serum?"

"They threatened to. But I always mouthed off enough that they'd lose patience before they could implement a non-violent approach. I was afraid of what they'd ask." She looked over at her brother to gauge his reaction. He looked pained, but not surprised.

"We couldn't have told you," he insisted. "The more you knew, the more danger we were all in."

"I know," she sighed. "It doesn't make being left out any less frustrating. Especially when you showed up to Hogwarts- where I had been handling myself until you three made it impossible for me to go back, mind you- and you tried to keep me locked up in the damned Room of Requirement -" her voice rose before Ron managed to cut her off.

"That wasn't me," Ron insisted, his hands held up in surrender. "You can yell at your boyfriend for that one."

"Oh, I have and I will again. And he's my _ex-_ boyfriend," she clarified, as Ron rolled his eyes. "And he'll stay that way unless he starts treating me like an equal."

Ron wore his skepticism on his face as the two settled into a comfortable silence. Never one to stay silent for long, however, Ginny soon interrupted Ron's reverie with a difficult question.

"What did it do to you?" she asked, quietly, meeting his eyes. She saw the same look in them she had seen earlier in her room, and her heart lurched, knowing exactly what put that look there.

"What?"

"The horcrux. What did it do to you?"

Ron gulped visibly, his thin neck distending with the effort.

"Why do you assume it did something to me?" he rasped.

"Because I know you. And I know _him_ ," she nearly growled, "and he definitely went after you."

Ron looked away, unable to meet his sister's eyes.

"I'm right, aren't I?" Ginny asked. The softness of her tone was enough to convince Ron to raise his eyes to meet hers.

He nodded, but he couldn't bring himself to elaborate.

"Stop. Whatever it is you're thinking, stop, because you're wrong," she declared, knowing too well what thoughts Riddle was capable of planting in a person's head.

"I left," he said suddenly. "I walked out on them in the pouring rain, while Hermione begged me to stay. And it took me months to find my way back."

Ginny laughed, dryly. "He's good," she said, shaking her head.

"It couldn't have been that difficult to figure out I was the weakest link," Ron muttered. The self-loathing in his voice was evident, and she hurried to correct him.

"No, that's not it at all," she insisted. "This is what I'm talking about - he's good." She turned away from her brother and spoke to the open field, her past playing itself out on the empty space she stared into. "It's not about weakness at all. He goes after the good things, and twists them into something ugly. He doesn't need your weaknesses - he needs your strengths."

The silence stretched on for so long that she nearly jumped when Ron spoke.

"I have no fucking idea what you're talking about," Ron admitted. Ginny couldn't help it - she laughed.

"Of course you don't. You're an idiot."

"I thought I was an arsehole. A self-centered, self-serving arsehole," he mimicked her, his impression so spot-on that she smiled.

"That too," she replied. She sighed heavily, knowing she would need to spell it out for her brother, and hoping she could find the words to do so.

"If leaving's what you did, that's exactly what he wanted you to do. He obviously needed you gone to get to the other two, or he wouldn't have bothered going after you first."

Ron eyed her thoughtfully, then shook his head.

"It wasn't a diary though," he argued. "It was a locket we were wearing around our necks. It didn't really talk back or anything - it just made me think all these terrible things that were always there, but I was usually able to ignore. It didn't come from him at all- it came from me," he said, his voice raw with emotion. "It was all me. The worst parts of me, maybe, but it was all me."

"The parts you're usually strong enough to ignore, you mean?" Ginny asked pointedly. "No one likes you because you're poor, and your clothes don't fit, and you can't even afford proper school supplies? No one's noticed what's going on with you because they all have other _more important_ things to worry about? Look at how much trouble you are to deal with - it would be better for everyone if you would just disappear?"

By the time she finished ranting, Ron was looking at her as if he had never truly seen her before.

"Something like that," he said in barely a whisper. He shook his head as if the action would clear it, and went back to staring off at the stars that were beginning to appear in the distance. "He convinced me that they didn't need my help… or didn't want my help, for that matter. That they were just waiting for me to get out of their hair so they could be alone."

Ginny couldn't help herself. She laughed.

Ron grew defensive immediately.

"Well, I'm glad we had this talk then," he said gruffly, immediately pushing himself up to his feet.

"Ron, no—" Ginny exclaimed, latching onto his leg. "Stay. I'm sorry!" Ron didn't believe her, probably largely due to the fact that she was still laughing.

"Geroff me—" he muttered, but Ginny clung harder.

"I'm not laughing at you," she insisted. "It just - well it sounded like you were saying Harry and Hermione were carrying on a secret relationship behind your back, and I pictured it for a moment, and it was hilarious!"

Ron stopped struggling and looked down at her. Ginny flashed her best 'sorry little sister' smile, which must have worked, because he slowly lowered himself back onto the grass next to her.

"Why is that funny?" he questioned, cautiously.

"How is it not?" she countered. Ron shrugged, and Ginny realized he actually needed to know the answer. "Oh, Ron," she sighed. "You can't possibly think- First of all, Harry's completely obvious when he fancies someone - we all know that." Ron's eyes conceded to that point, so she continued. "And I've been teasing Hermione about fancying you since we all went to the World Cup together. I don't know why she liked you back then, you were a complete mess, but she did. You have to know that."

Ron didn't answer her right away. Ginny watched him as he breathed deeply, chest rising and falling, and fiddled with the blades of grass that stuck to his bare feet.

"That's ridiculous," he said finally. "I know she- well, I know that now, we … 4th year?" he stuttered. Ginny eyed him skeptically.

"Are you going to tell me that you didn't fancy Hermione during your 4th year? Because if I remember correctly, your opinion of a certain Bulgarian quidditch star took a nosedive around the time he started showing interest in her—"

"Okay, Okay," he interrupted her. "But that's different."

"How?" she challenged him.

"Well, like you said- I was a complete mess. She wasn't," he shrugged. Ginny smiled. His ears were obviously red even in the fading light, and she couldn't help but lean into him affectionately.

They sat in silence for quite a few moments as the light faded in the back garden. As the darkness took over, Ron reached into his pocket and fiddled with something Ginny couldn't see. Floating orbs of light seemed to fly from his pocket and lit up the night sky.

"How'd you do that?" Ginny asked, surprised. Ron passed over a small metal object, and she turned it over in her palm.

"It was Dumbledore's," he said. "He willed it to me. It's…. well, the light trick is cool, but it does other things too."

"Like what?" she asked, fascinated.

"I'm not really sure… but it somehow connected me to Harry and Hermione, after I had left. She said my name, and I heard it, and I clicked it and it took me to them." Ron's voice was soft and far-away, as if he knew what he was saying was true but still couldn't make sense of it.

Ginny squinted at the strange object, her mind whirling.

"He knew him too," she declared finally.

"Who? What?" Ron asked, shaking his head to rid himself of his far off thoughts.

"Dumbledore. He knew Tom like I did. He knew Tom would go after you, just like I did… and he gave you a way back." Ginny smiled at her own revelation.

Ron stared at her, blinking quicker than should have been necessary.

"What?" she questioned, as he continued to stare.

"That's what Harry told me, when I found him with it." He eyed her in a way that made her uncomfortable, and she squirmed under his gaze.

"Don't look at me like that," she admonished.

"Like what?"

"Like the rest of us look at you when you and Hermione do something couple-y and obnoxious," she explained, her face contorting as if she had just gotten a handful of all the worst every-flavor beans.

"We are _not_ couple-y and obnoxious," Ron argued.

Ginny's eyes must have given her away, because Ron immediately lunged toward the metal object she was still holding in her hand. Ginny was on her feet in a flash, running with the trinket held high above her head.

"She said my name, and her voice led me back to her," she mimicked as best she could, still racing back toward the garden.

"Give that back!" Ron bellowed, quickly gaining on her. She knew it was only a matter of time before he caught up to her with his long legs, so it was time for drastic measures. She pulled her wand out of her pocket and pointed it in what she hoped was the direction of the broomshed.

"Accio Cleansweep!" she cried.

She heard Ron's spell follow hers, and she grinned with anticipation. There was a loud crash in the broomshed, and in mere moments she and Ron had retrieved their brooms and were both airborne, weaving in and on out of the floating orbs Ron had released earlier.

"What are you two doing?" came a shout from the kitchen, but Ginny paid her mother no mind.

For the first time in years, she and her brother were on equal footing - and she wasn't coming down without a fight.


End file.
